The Eagle-Gazette Staff

When Crystal Bowersox performs July 27 at the Lancaster Festival, it will mark a number of firsts for the Oak Harbor, Ohio, native.

It will be the first road stop of her summer tour, the first festival performance of her career and the first time she will sing accompanied by a full symphony orchestra.

“This is going to be transformational for my music,” she said. “It will be brand new for me and my audience.

“I think it’s a bad idea to limit yourself to one thing. I’m just excited. I’m going to learn a lot in the process, (and) I hope it will influence my music in the future,” she said.

The 27-year-old 2010 “American Idol” runner-up will perform an hour of her 90-minute show accompanied by the Lancaster Festival Orchestra. Its conductor, Gary Sheldon, invited Bowersox to perform with the 65-person symphony.

“Some artists are more suited for symphony orchestra, and Crystal is very well suited because of the strength of her voice and also because of the versatility of her voice,” he said. “The rich sounds of the strings and the powerful sounds of the brass adds so much texture and support to the music; it’s powerful and beautiful. It tightens the overall musical experience.”

Sheldon said working with Bowersox, who will perform a traditional show in Portland, Ore., where she now lives, before setting out on the tour, was an easy experience and that the most difficult part of the process was dealing with time constraints. It takes an hour to orchestrate 30 seconds of music, and Sheldon estimated that the 60-minute arrangement took him 120 hours to compose.

The decision to try something new with the Lancaster Festival show matches Bowersox’s trend with her latest album, “All That For This,” as the artist has worked to distance herself from judgmental tendencies brought out during her “American Idol” experience.

“Going on ‘Idol’ and being nitpicked, I don’t think that is healthy for any human being,” she said. “When you start to internalize that judgment, that’s when people can lose their minds with it.

“I tried some different things on this record that I never would have before,” she said. “I went into the mindset of saying yes more often than not (and) not being judgmental of an idea before it is fully formed. This show is a part of that personal growth for me.”

Bowersox’s album, recorded in Portland, uses some synthesized sounds and, by her evaluation, is less traditional than her post-‘Idol’ release “Farmer’s Daughter.” Part of her Lancaster Festival show will be performed with electric violinist Tracy Silverman.

The show, which will be at 8:15 p.m. on the Wendel Concert Stage at Ohio University-Lancaster and has tickets available ranging from $5 for children lawn seats to $35 table seats, is Bowersox’s only scheduled tour stop in Ohio. While she expects to see family and friends, Bowersox views the home-state stop as a business trip, she said.

“I want to keep that pattern of trying new things,” she said. “Try different genres and different styles.”